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How long has the company been established?Well I can give you a little bit of the company history. The roots of Asda as a company can be traced back as far as the 1920’s and have two branches. The Asquith family had an original family business, a butchers shop in Knottingley, West Yorkshire. The two sons of the owner W.R Asquith, Peter and Fred were actively involved in the business and were later to become co-founders of Asda.
The .Com element was added in the autumn of 1998 when the business first entered the internet grocery home shopping market by opening two home shopping depots at Watford and Croydon. Home shopping then migrated to our stores from where we currently cover almost 93% of UK households. The new Asda Direct proposition featuring our General Merchandise and George clothing offer launched online in September 2008 and was supported by our first nationally distributed Catalogue that went out through our stores a month later
Where did the idea for the ASDA business come from?
Asda is renowned for providing fantastic value and legendary service to our customers. The Asda stores have been trading GM and George very successfully for some time now so it is right that we offer our online customers the opportunity to shop this range as well. Asda Direct is a natural progression from our rapidly expanding Asda.com grocery home shopping business and it’s our intention to allow everyone to experience ASDA, even if they don't have an Asda store in their locality.
How does the ASDA business model work?
I think that you’d have to be from another planet not to know how the ASDA store business works. The online business though is a little more complex. Asda e-commerce platforms support online shopping for both groceries and general merchandise/George clothing. We operate the grocery business out of 175 stores and deliver to each stores local area, allowing our 900 delivery vans us to reach around 95% of all UK postcodes.
The Asda Direct business trades around 750,000 stocked and stockless products operating in partnership with 3rd party fulfilment and carrier specialists. We currently deliver to home but have plans in place to offer our online customers the option of also having purchases delivered to any Asda store. We also launched our first Asda Direct catalogue last October and plan to use this to market the proposition ongoing.
What is the company's philosophy?
The Asda mission is to be Britain's best value retailer exceeding customer’s needs always and our purpose is to make goods and services more affordable for everyone. When you come to work for Asda you quickly get to understand what this business is all about; keeping the costs as low as possible and passing the benefits onto our customers by keeping the price of our products and services as low as we can
How did it get off the ground?
We’ve had a grocery home hopping business for 10 years but to be perfectly honest we only really stated to realise it’s potential about 3 years go. The GM business has been around for a couple of years and we started to implement our multichannel strategy about 18 months ago.
Who is your key target market?
Our aim is to develop our multi channel offer so that it appeals to everyone. Whether there is an Asda store in your locality or not, we believe that all UK residents deserve the opportunity to take advantage of Asda everyday low prices. As we offer such a broad range of products including food, electrical, toys, George clothing, etc we attract a very broad range of customers who want the security of such a trusted brand
When was the first catalogue produced?
We weren’t sure about developing a catalogue business at first so we tested the water in Xmas 2007 when we produced a 200 pager promoting only toys and electrical which we distributed through 5 stores in the north of England. This gave us enough encouragement to carry on. Therefore the first 644 page Asda Direct catalogue was launched in October 2008 showing a credible offer fronted up with the Asda furniture ranges, also offering home decor, electrical and toys. We also ventured into new online categories such as jewellery.
It was our first effort at producing a catalogue of this size and I think we did a decent job, however we’ve learned a lot from this one and I know future versions will be better. We’ve now built up a small team of very talented, creative catalogue experts in Asda House and I can’t wait to see what they produce for spring/summer. I haven’t been looking forward to a publication as much since I waited for the final Harry Potter book to come out.
How often are the catalogues changed / refreshed?
There will be 2 catalogues a year with the smaller book launched to customers in early April featuring outdoor product and the larger catalogue launching in September to sell through to the Christmas period.
How would you define the ASDA Catalogues?
These are not a 'directory' ranged catalogue as are the Tesco and Argos versions but more of an inspirational coffee table book, by the nature of being smaller in pagination and more friendly and helpful in the way the selling message interacts with the customer.
What process do you use to source ASDA products?
Our web trading team work very closely with the Asda stores product buyers to provide a joined up approach, We do have a great advantage in that we work very closely with the Wal-mart buying teams and to have the buyers from the biggest retail business on the planet alongside you really does help. Quality and value are the key elements which drive the offer, and we have had very positive feedback for our Asda direct "Deal of the day" where the best topical products are presented for our customers at great prices.
How often do you introduce new products?
The total web offer is updated constantly as we have a massive range of products on offer providing our customers with every motivation to visit the site on a regular basis. It’s a particularly important feature of our George clothing range, where the fashion element is especially fresh and up to the minute. A typical George item would have a life of around 6 weeks before it becomes discontinued so with a total range of over five thousand products, this is a very complex operation.
When did the website launch?
We have had an online presence for over a decade, and the new Asda Direct platform launched on the 29th September 2008
How has the website contributed to sales?
The whole.Asda.com business is already significant and contributing to the overall growth of the entire business. With our online grocery offer having been around since the late 90’s, this is a well established business and is producing substantial order volumes already – In the second half of 2008 we seemed to break a new record practically every week. (70% year on year growth for Home shopping.) Direct is a relative newcomer; however it is making a valuable contribution already.
Is there a particular time of day and / or day of the week your website is the busiest?
We follow the trend of most retail sites with Monday being our busiest sales day and early evening tending to be the busiest hours. I guess what happens is that in the early evening, everyone arrive home from work, eats a hearty dinner and gets in the mood for a spot of relaxed online shopping.
Have you put procedures into place to monitor your customer buying behaviour?
We employ a number of measures to try and understand how customers shop with us, for web analytics we use Coremetrics and Omniture, giving us a wealth of information to analyse, allowing us to track the customer journey and key activities. This, combined with all our transactional data, allows us to monitor every step of the process. We also regularly initiate customer insight research and online feedback surveys to stay in touch with our customers changing needs.
Our most recent effort though has been through the implementation of customer reviews via Bazaarvoice. This not only allows customers to leave helpful information for each other but also enables us to collate feedback on the quality of our products, customer service, delivery and the general perception of the ASDA brand.
How do maintain your customer database?
We're in the process of rebuilding our customer database to link together all areas of our online business and develop further customer insight on buying behaviour. This will allow us to optimise our marketing spend even further and ensure we talk to our customers at the right time, with the right message. Our ultimate aim is to generate a single view of all our customers so that we can effectively support them and communicate effectively with them across all points of contact.
Do you segment your database?
We segment on a number of key variables including LTV, frequency of shop and basket size - also cross purchasing around our different product areas. This allows us to target our customers as best possible, and the addition of new ASDA Direct data to this will continue to make this a crucial part of the developing, cost effective marketing communications
How often do you send out your email newsletters?
We send out a variety of email communication on a weekly basis. We have a very large database of customers who read our emails and in fact the opening rate is substantially higher than the average for this type of communication. We try to mix up the content with editorials, reviews, recipe suggestions, etc, all mixed in with the product offers.
What is the fundamental reason for your email newsletters?
Different emails have different objectives, however the overall objective is to offer value and build a good relationship with our customers. Specifically we send them out to welcome new customers, inform of promotional themes such as Mothers Day, tell the latest news on grocery and GM products and for multiple service related reasons.
Do you use a specific email marketing service provider?
We are working with BJL and AWA to create emails and moving over from DREAMmail to e-Circle as our Email service provider
Would you say you have any competitors?
Our online grocery business has the obvious competitors in Tesco, Sainsbury and Ocado. The GM business has literally thousands of online competitive sites but we tend to focus on a few such as Argos, Tesco and Next.
What has been the growth revenue in the last few years?
It wouldn’t be fair to talk specific numbers as I don’t want to scare our competitors; however our online grocery sales have been sufficient this year to take us to number 2 in this market. In GM we have various market shares but all are growing – in fact our entertainment site is now 4th biggest in the UK.
Over the years have there been any huge threats to the ASDA business?
Like most successful retailers, Asda has had to go through tough times in order to develop the experience and strength to maintain that success. The group is now the 2nd biggest retailer in the UK and part of the Wal-Mart family, the largest retailer in the world.
We are all heading into a challenging period where shopping habits will change and retailers need to adjust accordingly if they are to survive – this is a threat that Asda will overcome but I’m afraid that many other retailers won’t. We’re already seeing high profile casualties such as Woolworths and MFI and I’m sure that there will be many other household names going to the wall before we come through these hard times.
In Asda we’re planning our way through the risks associated with the ‘credit crunch’ by working closely with our suppliers to find ways to support them. Many UK senior management teams haven’t been through this before and that in itself creates the greatest risk to our business for the near future.
What does ASDA acknowledge as their biggest achievement?
I would say that our biggest achievement online was to launch a brand new Asda Direct web platform supported by a multi-million copy catalogue in less than 5 months. We began the project last April and everyone told us that it couldn’t possibly be done in less than 9 months – but we like a challenge.
What is set for the future for ASDA?
Asda home shopping and Asda Direct are the first steps on the road to a full multichannel offer for our customers. Plans are already in place to launch the next phases of this offer during 2009, so what we have managed to achieve in 2008, which was substantial in the time available, will be dwarfed by our next phases. Customers now shop and make buying decisions across many channels and any retailer who doesn’t cater for this will not thrive.
Most UK shoppers are now comfortable with technology; they’ve grown up with it and use it constantly to make their busy lives easier. So when the time comes to make a purchase, they don’t just visit the High Street and choose from the limited ranges on display, they research online or using catalogues, they visit shops to touch the product, press the buttons or feel the cloth, they then go online and try to find the best prices and services. This process is happening millions of times every day and retailers who stick with the traditional ways won’t have the opportunity to interact with these customers. We’re implementing a strategy which ultimately will allow our customers to communicate with us at any level they want, buy from a vast range of products and have the opportunity to receive or return those products in any way they chose.
